Agrarianism is newly popular among urbanites, and with good reason. The trend may bear big benefits in small towns, too

Diagram of a country community center. Including school, church, town hall and industrial plant. Circular 84 Office of Experimental Stations. From Country Life and the Country School, 1912, via Daily Yonder.

Local Food Boom Should Yield Rural Fruit

By Timothy Collins
Daily Yonder
Aug 22, 2010

Excerpt:

The heart of Duany’s proposal is that a dependable local food supply, raised by human hands with a minimum of fossil energy, is not only doable — it may be necessary: Duany calls it, “circling the wagons” against ecological disasters brewing around the globe.

As a rural observer who has seen far too many slums – both rural and urban – I don’t want to pooh-pooh Duany’s idea. Putting aside for now its ironic, perhaps dismissive, overtones for rural America, the idea has tremendous merit, whether we’re sliding toward ecological perdition or not. In fact, many cities and towns have died, and any idea that can help stem the waste resulting from those deaths deserves a hearing, especially in smaller rural towns, the original walkable communities.

For a change, rural communities are at an advantage in such an effort. Human and natural assets are already in place to reshape small towns around small-scale farming and gardening for food and small-scale renewable energy production, perhaps with the goal of becoming ecovillages. When you drive through small towns during the summer, you’ll see absolutely beautiful plots of vegetables and flowers. There’s talent galore here, people who grew up on farms and brought their gardening talents with them when they moved to town to work or retire.

Read the complete article here.